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Early Addition
Oh, SNAP! In year-after-Katrina interview with 60 Minutes, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin mentions the lack of development at Ground Zero when pressed by reporter Byron Pitts about post-Katrina New Orleans progress. And it's an effective smack to city and state officials. Here's how the CBS News site explains the exchange:
On a tour of the decimated Ninth Ward, Nagin tells Pitts the city has removed most of the debris from public property and it’s mainly private land that’s still affected – areas that can’t be cleaned without the owners' permission. But when Pitts points to flood-damaged cars in the street and a house washed partially into the street, the mayor shoots back. "That’s alright. You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair."You know, in spite of all the problems with contracts to rebuild New Orleans and their bureaucratic problems, the man's gotta point. If you watch the video clip, Pitts' reaction is of either disbelief, acknowledgement, or nervous smile. Lower Manhattan Development Corporation head Kevin Rampe, though, took offense at the remark and issued a statement emphasizing the "tremendous progress" made, "We understand how difficult rebuilding a city after such destruction can be." Of course, the two situations aren't exactly apples to apples but one thing common to both: Nothing will happen quickly and the government officials will inevitably slow and foul things up.
Listen to reactions from 1010 WINS listeners.
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this guy is a douche.
the guy is a douche.
This from the man who wants New Orleans to be a chocolate city once again.
Maybe someone should have retorted that New Orleans has "just a couple of puddles" that they can't seem to get cleaned up?
What a cockfart.
Shame on you for even considering that this douchebag has a point!
He's right.
NO and NYC have much in common.
We put our minorities in separate communities, we have a corrupt PD, and rich white folks love to party.
Don't be so smug, You think NYC can handle an emergency as Hurricane Katrina?
We can't handle a rain storm in the Subway.
Better buy rafts.
Actually, I too think he has a good point. Not only do we have no progress on ground zero, that's just one parcel. This guy lost an entire city. That includes all of the equipment needed to repair the city. And lots of people.
I give him a touche.
This coming from the man who skipped a public hearing by vacationing in Jamaica but told his pa to say he was on business in Washington:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/08/21/8383661/
Actually, he does have a point. It's half a decade later and little has been done. While it was quite traumatic how that "hole" got there, it is just that, just as NOLA community leaders refer to their patches of "dirt". Nagin is nothing special, but this is a pretty fair and accurate assessment.
The man has a point?!? We have to completely redevelop the WTC site. Mayor Nagin needs to get a damn tow truck and move some cars. What a douche.
His statement, though harsh, is valid. Yes, the whole site needs to be redone, but five years have passed and still the place is no more than a hole.
yeah right, new orleans talking about development... that's rich!
Other than the LMDC talking heads, is there anyone out there that thinks that the WTC development effort is going well? Nagin's comments mirror what we have all been saying--the process is fraught with bureaucracy, political backstabbing, and betrayal. Five years later, and we have nothing more than a hole in the ground and a whole lot of disappointment.
Nagin may be a moron, but let's not start praising the LMDC just because our big hole is less broke than their big swamp.
The point is entirely invalid, and the comparison is a non-starter. From an emotional standpoint it is indeed embarrassing that so little progress has been made on WTC.
But WTC is one of the most egregiously mismanaged quasi-public development boondoggles in American history. So many things about the site, the planning and the resultant buildings were flawed that it's hard to know where to start. Let's just say that New York never had a need for one billion extra square feet of office space. Never. It never had the need for a grid-interruptor of that magnitude. That's why only government tenants could be secured for several years. That's why the Port Authority (of the world's biggest shrinking port) took over two mammoth skyscrapers at a time when port operations were already at their lowest ebb (!) in decades.
And New York still doesn't need two buildings at Ground Zero. It still doesn't need the office space downtown (recall the condo conversions south of Canal). It might be better for NYC to deal without artifically inflated office stock for a while. These aren't affordable housing units we're talking about. This isn't liveable space. This is office space where there is no need.
I acknowledge the need from an emotional standpoint to put something in the hole, by way of giving a giant fuck you to terrorists.
But Nagin's comparison holds no water. He's got his city doing that for him just fine.
Ooh, how dare anyone speak ill of NYC/Government beauracracy and red tape. Get over it people, the man has a point, albiet made in a crude non-tactful way.
It's been one year since an entire CITY was completely destroyed and an entire population was displaced. You can bet your ass he and the people down there have a chip on their collective shoulders.
So Nagin is saying that he's incompetent but others are more so? The man who lost his self-control in front of the cameras, who claimed that 10,000 had died without one iota of evidence who didn't have an emergency plan in place? That man?
^^Huh?
what's a non starter? You mean a starting pitche on rotation who suddenly can't pitch in an upcoming game?
And, Nagin is correct. we still do have a hole in the ground 5 years later and that's a few acres that still can't get anything done.
Just a few acres, folks.
"Pitts' reaction is of either disbelief, acknowledgement, or nervous smile."
None of the above. He's thinking, 'Thank you for my sound byte.'
An entire city decimated vs. what is essentially a giant void. i'm sorry, Nagin has a point. It's going to take a lot more time and effort to rebuild the city of New Orleans. New York City, the families, the developers, et. al have been himming and hawing for 5 years. building a city vs. building a tower. c'mon y'all. It seems that people have forgotten about what happened to New Orleans-- the media certainly has. Everyday, you can't escape hearing some reference to September 11th. folks perished at both sites, spaces destroyed, and in both instances, grave and egregious lapses in communication. I think Nagin's comments about a Chocolate City were more off base than this one.
This is coming from a guy who hid on the top of a hotel during the hurricane, blamed the federal government for his city's lack of planning, had an emotional breakdown on live television, had his own police officers abandon their posts and people looting in the streets. And he criticizes our city??? Unbelievable. Funny, I don't remember New Yorkers pointing fingers, looting in the streets, and our law enforcement didn't abandon their posts. On the contrary, we came together, our mayor demonstrated strength and leadership, and our law enforcement showed courage. Ray Nagin can go F*ck himself.
Nagin's statement is not the real problem here. He said out loud the very thing that NO New Yorker wants to admit, and the problem with that is we can't say that he's wrong.
God forbid anyone criticize New York. Yet another sign of most New Yorker's total insecurity. If we don't keep saying how awesome we are than someone might notice this place is just average, at best.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that agreed with his comment. Love NYC all you want but both the WTC and New Orleans are major redevelopment projects with no major leader. Nagin can talk all he wants but he never backs up what he says with any action while Bloomberg was more concerned about building an unneeded stadium for a failed Olympic bid than getting real work done at the Trade Center site. In the end, it's the people of both cities who suffer at the hands of their leaders.
But New York City has the greatest big hole in the ground.
Another vote for "he has a point". Nagin was challenged by the reporter, and came back with a valid comparison. He's rebiulding an entire city. Meanwhile, we've had the same hole in the ground for five years, and it may be there for years to come depending on whether or not they get any businesses to actually move in.
One can "have a point" and show an ounce of self-restraint and professionalism. That was a moment for him to emphasizes the difficulty of re-building to get people to commit to helping New Orleans and he blew it.
I love Ray Nagin, despite his apparent lunacy, and he does have a point. As a current NY'er and former New Orleanian, knowing very well that the situations are really not at all equivalent, Pitts asked a ridiculous question (how on earth could a city that was 80% underwater for a week possibly be cleaned up in a year -- it took that and longer to clean up the debris from the WTC and we all know it) and got the answer he deserved. At least Nagin is honest.
i think people are missing the point. Nagin seems to be shifting blame again. Nobody disagrees with the fact that our big hole isn't fixed but i'm sure people down there would prefer he kept his focus on them.
Sure it was a very unpolitical thing for Nagin to say, but he was right. What other mayor in any other major city in the U.S. has ever had the job of essentially rebuilding his city from the ground up? Before Katrina, Nagin had started implementing plans to bring more businesses to New Orleans and thereby increase the tax base of a basically poor city--certainly more than any previous N.O. mayor had done.
But there is more than enough blame to go around for everyone.
From CNN.com:
"To demonstrate his concern for the area, Bush visited New Orleans ten times between September and March. The administration has trumpeted its commitment to spending $107.8 billion to fight the impact of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma--a great deal of money, but it's spread over all five Gulf states.
About two-thirds of it went to immediate disaster relief and flood-insurance payments; only about 17% is going to long-term rebuilding and recovery in the worst-hit areas, including levee repair and wetlands reconstruction. Bush did not ask Congress to allocate any money at all for levee repair until Oct. 28, two months after Katrina - and the requested amount, $1.6 billion, was less than 1/4 of what the Corps had already stated was necessary."
Note to self: never say anything to a reporter from media-centric NYC that could be construed as criticism.
i’m a new yorker and i’m not mad at what ray nagin said. i'm disappointed at what he omitted:
‘That’s alright. You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed due to poor policy and inefficient management and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair maybe New Orleans can say the same thing in five years.’
Too bad that Mayor Nagin didn't jump in front of every camera covering the flood, puff his chest out, act self-rightesou and indignant and repeat: "Thank God George W. Bush is our President". People would be calling him "America's Other Mayor" and talk about running him for President. Such hypocricy on the part of Republican'ts. We still have a hole in the ground after five years because George Pataki hasn't figured out how to get it named "The Governor George Pataki World Trade Center Memorial".
Nagin has a point. There's not one goddamned brick of a new WTC at ground zero, five years later.
He obviously didn't mean to insult New Yorkers. On the contrary, any self-respecting New Yorker knows exactly what he meant, and we have the confidence to not be insulted (and I commend those who stood up here and agreed with him). Kudos to those who have the balls to tell it like it is.
Our tragedies are like apples and oranges, however his tragedy will logistically take a lot longer to repair. We're just repairing one specific part of our city. He has to repair virtually his entire city. Chocolate or vanilla, it's a lot of area to cover.
I find it amazing that he would still have a comment after all the crap we have been through. (And yes I am from New Orleans.) I am not "Chocolate" though, but I am still part of that state. And the fact that he can not handle New Orleans at all shows he can not be a leader or handle anything.
I work four blocks from Ground Zero and I think Nagin is right. I wish they'd build something on the WTC site. I don't care how ugly or stupid or shortsighted it is. Just build SOMETHING.
Yes, Mr. Nagin lacks the same poise under pressure that say, Mr. Giuliani (backed by the U.S. Federal Government, his entire local officials, and most of the American public). Sure, Mr. Nagin has made some questionable comments in the past (I still chuckle at the ridiculous "Chocolate City" comment when everyone knows that old rich white folks run the South just like in the North!)
Despite this, the man's criticism of the WTC rebuilding efforts is valid, especially in the face of such a stupid question.
I'm not really amazed at the theatrical indignace displayed in some of these responses. It's typical of Americans (strikingly similar to the French - as in, "don't criticize us because we're always right") and reflects the same attitude that others castigate Mr. Nagin for having. It's the same lack of self-examination that allowed Katrina to be so devastating and dare I say, breeds more people willing to perpetuate 9-11 style attacks on our country. It's time that we stop jumping on those willing to raise a mirror to our faces and start asking ourselves how we can do better.
Mr. Nagin, Mr. Bush, Mr. Bloomberg, etc.
I just wrote about this. If anyone cares to read it, you can do so by clicking here.